I'd really like to see a strong competitor to the Economist that reuses their core model, but minus the absurdly over the top biases (sorry, opinions). Sort of like a weekly more in depth version of BBC News, with saner digital pricing and a more attractive website.
I used to be a regular read of TE, but stopped last year because of the infuriating and endless propaganda re: Putin and Russia. The topics they write about where the editors have very strong opinions on controversial topics have always been by far the worst of their output.
As Standage points out, people read TE to feel at the end like they're informed. To read TE and at the end feel like I've been treated like a child, or shovelled a big steaming plate of angry warmongering ... well, it didn't give me the TE experience I was paying for.
They should have learned from their experience of strongly supporting the invasion of Iraq, but apparently no such luck. I hoped after Micklethwait left they'd get a grip on this but it only got worse. They just don't seem capable of talking about wars or foreign policy with anything like the same detachment that they'd discuss e.g. the economy of Indonesia.
When I read on the BBC occasionally I read something eyebrow raising too, but it's much, much rarer. They have a specific commitment to being unbiased, they clearly separate fact from opinion instead of mixing them and overall they don't seem to have many journalists or editors with extreme opinions. The BBC's accuracy suffers badly however from being a real time news organisation. Whenever I read something that's clearly (factual) nonsense on the Beeb it's pretty obviously always because someone who wasn't a subject matter expert had to throw together a story within an hour and struggled to do it well.
A combination of the two approaches would be something I'd happily pay for again.
I used to be a regular read of TE, but stopped last year because of the infuriating and endless propaganda re: Putin and Russia. The topics they write about where the editors have very strong opinions on controversial topics have always been by far the worst of their output.
As Standage points out, people read TE to feel at the end like they're informed. To read TE and at the end feel like I've been treated like a child, or shovelled a big steaming plate of angry warmongering ... well, it didn't give me the TE experience I was paying for.
They should have learned from their experience of strongly supporting the invasion of Iraq, but apparently no such luck. I hoped after Micklethwait left they'd get a grip on this but it only got worse. They just don't seem capable of talking about wars or foreign policy with anything like the same detachment that they'd discuss e.g. the economy of Indonesia.
When I read on the BBC occasionally I read something eyebrow raising too, but it's much, much rarer. They have a specific commitment to being unbiased, they clearly separate fact from opinion instead of mixing them and overall they don't seem to have many journalists or editors with extreme opinions. The BBC's accuracy suffers badly however from being a real time news organisation. Whenever I read something that's clearly (factual) nonsense on the Beeb it's pretty obviously always because someone who wasn't a subject matter expert had to throw together a story within an hour and struggled to do it well.
A combination of the two approaches would be something I'd happily pay for again.